Admissions

LREI seeks to enroll students who are bright, curious, motivated and who show strong academic promise. The School is committed to creating an environment that is reflective of the wider community by enrolling students from diverse religious, ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds and gender identities. Creating this diverse student body fosters opportunities for deeper cultural learning and understanding.

We Are LREI

Welcome to LREI. We are now, as we have always been, guided by our school's mission. As a truly progressive school community, we never shy away from the challenges and the possibilities of change and growth. It is this bold, experimental, progressive vision of education that continues to inspire and guide the LREI community today. What we did yesterday, what we are doing today, and what we will do tomorrow are all a part of a coherent 14-year experience inspired by our mission.

Academics

Since its founding, the LREI experience has been grounded in progressive principles that shape the design of program in each of our divisions. These principles place students at the center of their learning experiences, call on us to narrow the distance between the world around students and their school experiences, and engage learners in authentic problem solving on a daily basis. Our mission driven approach informs all aspects of our 14-year experience.

Life @ LREI

Our founding ideals of learning that is grounded in experience, inquiry, collaboration, growth and active democratic citizenship inform every aspect of daily life at LREI. LREI truly is a community of learners; it is a place where students, faculty and families come together each day in the spirit of creativity, collaboration and consequence.

Our Community

LREI is a community built on understanding and respect for others. Like New York City, we are diverse in every sense of the word. We are scientists, artists, historians and more. We embody a wide range of interests, beliefs, family structures and backgrounds. We thrive on the unique ideas and perspectives each person brings to the school.

News Detail

Middle Schoolers and Social Media

Ana

Middle Schoolers and Social Media

Technology in general and social media in particular present both an opportunity and challenge. Not just for middle schoolers, but for us as adults as well. On one hand, we have unprecedented access to information and each other. On the other hand, this access, unfiltered, has a cost. Much has been written recently about the correlation between social media use and unhappiness. The question for us as educators and parents is: How do we model and teach responsible, skillful digital citizenship in the age of finstas, Snapchat and FOMO?

As a community, here are our guiding principles:

It’s not (just) about the technology. The issues that surface when kids start using social media are actually not about the technology or the app itself, though those tools do amplify and accelerate them. Middle schoolers are grappling with what they always have: how to be a good friend, how to be loyal, how to tell the truth when it’s hard, how to keep a secret, when not to keep a secret, how to be funny, how to be forceful, how to be kind, what is romance, what is privacy, what is sexy, what is safe, and what kind of person they want to be. The questions we as adults face are also the same: how to be connected as they gain independence, how to set limits, how to build trust, how to ask the right questions.

Be more involved, not less. As social media gives children the opportunity to have greater independence and privacy, we need to find new and more skillful ways of staying connected and involved. Middle schoolers want us to pay attention and to set limits more than they may ever say. Here is a contract that one parent gave her son when he received his first iPhone. I encourage you to take inspiration from it and use it to create your own family’s rules. Below are some guidelines the we recommend at this age:

Middle schoolers should get phones when they need them for safety reasons: that is, when they start to travel alone.

Phones should be checked in at night, and not be taken into the bedroom.

The minimum age for virtually every social media app is thirteen, which means if your child has an account it is effectively yours, and under your active supervision.

Build trust. Let you child know how and when you will be checking up on them and what the expectation is. You are allowed to say, “Ok, I’m checking your texts now, give me your phone for a few minutes.” Don’t read emails, texts, or posts in secret. Give privacy in measured doses and take it back when you need to.

Communicate with other parents. Let them know if anything feels uncomfortable or inappropriate. Coordinate efforts and set norms together when possible.

Cultivate an analog life. You can model this by establishing tech-free times together as a family. Here are some ideas from Janell Burley Hofmann about cultivating some “Slow Tech” rules for your family. Also, middle schoolers need and want opportunities to socialize and to do it away from the watchful eye of adults. It is perfectly developmentally appropriate for them to do that. Both Danah Boyd, who wrote It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens and Jean Twenge, author of iGen describe how young people have fewer opportunities than past generations to meet up outside, in the neighborhood, at the park or the mall. They are recreating some of that private social time in their lives online. We need to help them connect with each other the old fashioned way. Give them permission and opportunities to be outside together. Or to roam a museum. Without their phones.

It was terrific to see so many of you yesterday at our Social Media Evening. I hope that is just the beginning of the conversation. I am including some resources below. As I said yesterday, though, there is no perfect resource, no cheat sheet for which apps are safe and how to monitor them; the world of social media changes so fast. The best way to learn about your child’s life online is to be present and attentive, to stay in conversation with them, with us and each other.